You know, after a while, your confidence starts to grow. Whether that’s cultivating an identity for yourself, taking positive energy in, making new friends, having new experiences, and so forth, your confidence grows, and grows, and grows.

Over the years, I learned that people will pick on you to get a reaction out of you. Sometimes, it’s fun when you play along with it, because it’s important to laugh at yourself once in a while. But when it becomes an everyday thing, an all-the-time thing — people will take advantage of you.

In my third year in college, it’s been a totally different experience. I’ve found plenty of success in terms of deflecting unwanted attention, and I’ve grown as a result. One of the most powerful ways is to ignore. Simply don’t acknowledge negativity. For example, don’t acknowledge a bully’s existence. And when they cross a line, leave. Leave their vicinity, leave them physically, mentally, whatever. It will drive them nuts, or they will respect you because you’re not allowing them to fuck with you. It’s actually really fun, and if you want to gain respect out of people, sometimes ignoring them works. It’s weird, and it sounds mean, but it’s true and it works. And not to say that I’ve had to deflect a lot of unwanted attention, but the times I’ve had to, I’ve been successful.

Another thing is when people try to knock you down over virtually anything, care less. That’s right. Care the fuck less. Don’t let people run you over. Care less for their negative words and negative actions, and care more about yourself by cultivating a positive mindset (link to the “Positive Mindsets” article on the homepage). That’s the most important part of your self-concept: how you view yourself. Self-love is important to cultivate, and when you do, confidence comes naturally. You sometimes hear the saying ignorance is bliss, but bliss certainly goes hand in hand with confidence. In other words, confidence is bliss.

Care less for their negative words and negative actions, and care more about yourself by cultivating a positive mindset.

What do I mean by confidence is bliss? Well, let’s say you walk up to someone and start a conversation. If they ignore you, or don’t acknowledge you, or make fun of you, or something negative, just keep being you. Find someone else to talk to, because someone else will enjoy your confidence. Some people want to bring you down because they see something in you that they don’t have. Or, they want to pick on you because you react, and they feel powerful. Don’t let them; instead, just move on and find someone else while retaining your confidence. Or, if you’re witty and you’ve got a good comeback, serve them up what they deserve. When a bully sees you are retaining your confidence despite their attacks on you, they will respect you, or they will feel that you have an edge over them because they don’t affect you.

When people make fun of you, especially one’s that won’t stop, you should completely remove them from your life. Remove them from social media, just completely eradicate them. They are toxic people who only want to see you suffer, they are people who only want to feel powerful (and they chose you to feed on), and they are detrimental to your mental health. Additionally, find some of your friends and support networks by teaming up against them. One of the best ways to deflect negative attention is to reinforce positive attention within your in-groups.

Now, to investigate this further, let’s define confidence and bliss. By definition, confidence is fulltrust;beliefinthepowers,trustworthiness,orreliabilityofa personorthing. And, by definition, bliss is supreme happiness;utterjoyorcontentment. So, essentially, confidence is like feeling happy all the time. Why? Because your belief in yourself blocks out all the negative, and you can easily move on. Bullies don’t like it when you’re happy. It pisses them off, and it’s really empowering for you.

Confidence is bliss.

This concept works anywhere. People will see you are not quick to emotions when you are made fun of, and they will respect that because you don’t even acknowledge their attacks, and you don’t acknowledge what they think about you. In fact, they see that you acknowledge your high value. Just think about it, you have your inner world, and they have theirs. They cannot penetrate your inner world unless you let them. When you’re confident, you’ve left a huge wall between you and everything else that’s negative. It feels amazing when you do this in action.

Another thing is it’s important to be vulnerable. Be vulnerable by being yourself, and letting people know who you are and where you’ve been. Deep down, people want to learn about you. They want to know the things that seem taboo, like your deepest secrets, what you like, don’t like, what you’ve been through, etc. Plus, you open yourself up to new experiences, and even though being vulnerable is risky, it can also be very rewarding. It’s too bad we live in such a buttoned up society where emotions are locked in tight. Opening up is hard.Really hard. And I have much respect for those of you who open up daily. A lot of us, sadly, don’t.

It’s too bad we live in such a buttoned up society where emotions are locked in tight.

So, in essence:confidence is bliss. Believe it, believe in yourself, ignore the negative, and let the happiness flow.

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You deserve to be treated well, but remember this – if you place yourself BELOW people and assume that they WON’T accept you or DON’T accept you, then those people will treat you less favorably, take advantage of you, ignore you, etc. – Dan Bacon